U2 Documentary to Open Toronto Film Festival

"From the Sky Down" marks a first for the annual event, which this year also includes projects involving Pearl Jam and Madonna.

A documentary focusing on the making of U2’s 1991 album Achtung Baby will open the Toronto International Film Festival on Sept. 8. It will be the first time since TIFF’s inception 36 years ago that the festival has opened with a documentary.

From The Sky Down incorporates previously unseen footage of the band in Berlin and Dublin and new interviews. Davis Guggenheim (An Inconvenient Truth, It Might Get Loud) directs.

“U2 has defied the gravitational pull towards destruction, this band has survived and thrived. The movie From the Sky Down asks the question why,” Guggenheim said in a press release on the TIFF website.

The group’s critically-acclaimed 1991 album was certified eight times multi-platinum less than six years after it was released, and has sold over 18 million copies to date. Achtung Baby won the 1993 Grammy Award for best rock performance by a duo or group with vocal. Popular singles off the album include “Mysterious Ways” and “One.” It frequently ranks as critics’ best albums of all time.

The Irish quartet won’t be the only musicians whose work will make the trek to Toronto.

Cameron Crowe will screen Pearl Jam Twenty, a documentary about the band that spans its 20 years of existence. Multihyphenate Madonna will show her directorial debut W.E., tracing the story of the controversial Duchess of Windsor with that of a ‘90s New Yorker.